General

Common present day mantra de-values the idea for new venture, putting much more emphasis on the execution. While I agree, that does not mean the concept itself is meaningless. Ideas for new ventures, products, etc may hit you at any moment. I’ve found it productive to do my best to capture those. Going back to 2009, I’ve been capturing most ideas for new products in Evernote. It can be something...

The first few days at my first job out of college at a big company, was, to no surprise, a tedious checklist of forms to fill out and compliance-based sessions. AKA, welcome to the company, here’s how not to get fired, I’ve learned that how you onboard employees makes a huge impact – similar to onboarding a new user to your product. To no surprise, our earliest employees were...

“Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” -Winston Churchill Be forewarned; this is one of the more abstract concepts, and therefore posts, that I’ll write about. This has been floating around in my head for some time – an accretion of thoughts rather than a singular concrete idea. In the wake of the recent electoral upending of society, and the shockwaves that...

I realize that most of my recent posts are around the common thread of “things I’ve learned scaling a startup” – this, of course, holds true to that expectation. There are a set of common adages related to talent – hire slow + fire fast, don’t screw up culture, don’t cut corners. One of the interesting concepts, however, is matching the caliber of talent...

We recently celebrated our fifth Founders Day – the anniversary of us incorporating the company on October 11th, 2011. While “Proactive CRM” was the initial idea that we pursued, we’ve spent a fair amount of time articulating what the “big idea” behind it was – and therefore, the impetus for devoting so much time and resources towards our goal. As the company has evolved and matured...

Like any new father, there is the macadam of emotions, most pervasively the fear of the unknown regarding caring for a new, and completely dependent, life.
So I solicited a bunch of advice from friends and, rather than keeping it to myself, put it into an ebook for future new dads.
Get it here, and good luck!

There’s a certain frustration around the democratic process – while “every vote counts” we can’t help but feel that our actual vote is an infinitesimal part. I’ve been impressed with recent efforts, and of course Contactually is part of that (our preference is to cancel all in person meetings). We can go further than that, and, YMMV, we should go further than...

I was curious about the big move to chatbots, and how that applies to Contactually and user interfaces in general. So, as an exploration, I built a simple bot that runs on Slack. And just for fun, it’s a bot that lets you hurl insults extracted from Shakespeare’s works. Say hello to Angry Shakespeare. Building a chatbot is a refreshing experience. With the incredible fragmentation +...

One of the qualities we look for in all of our hires is adaptability. One is almost guaranteed to have a different job with different tactics than they signed up for, and someone who stubbornly thinks that they can simply one they did yesterday will drown. Adaptability has a cousin that is just as valuable in a person, and plays an even more important role in the aggregate culture of a company...

As the most tenured person in Contactually (dating back to origination of the idea), it’s no surprise that I am a host to many opinions. What the perceived correct answer to a question is, next best action, how to interpret the data. With greater frequency, my opinion is overruled. While some may think a leader who never “gets their way” would be an incendiary one –...